


And the Moon Bleeds Red

by YoMo715



Series: Remembered Anew (Breath of the Wild Ficlets) [7]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood moon, Character Death, F/M, Gore, Graphic Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmare, Post-Calamity, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 00:18:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12287250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoMo715/pseuds/YoMo715
Summary: Link has a nightmare.





	And the Moon Bleeds Red

_ It’s so dark. _

_ Darker than a moonless night, the pitch blackness pervades everything. Not a single hint of light prevails. _

_ There’s no seam separating land from sky, no way of telling which way is up or down. It’s nothing but a dark world with no echo. Even the sense of self is lost in this plane, where there is no light to illuminate the soul. _

_ The lines of reality blur together like a murky ocean, swallowing him into its great depths. _

_ The air is thick, hot, rotten and carrying a putrid scent likened to decaying flesh. His eyes burn and sting. He can’t catch his breath, coughing and retching and suffocating. _

_ Each breath is so painful! Burning him alive, scorching him, searing his very soul. He’s swallowing darkness, he realizes. It’s consuming him. _

_ He’s dying. _

_ His breath turns to blood. It’s oily, dripping from his mouth and clinging to his skin, coagulating like a runny jelly against him. _

_ He can see it now. The darkness has taken shape, but everything is dyed crimson. Formless, blurry reds create the backdrop, while more vivid mounds of hills and things that vaguely resemble trees morph and twist around him. He’s sinking in a pool of his own blood. It’s up to his knees and it stinks, like a pile of corpses in a field. _

_ The faintest hint of a voice—a woman’s he doesn’t recognize—rings like gold in the distance. It’s so quiet he barely registers it, but he can tell she’s crying out. “Don’t die!” She’s howling. “Don’t leave me!” _

**_Help me!_ ** _ He tries to scream.  _ **_Please!_ **

_ It instead manifests as a horrible choking noise, a disgusting gurgle of blood bubbling up his throat. He gags on it. Spits, gasps, coughs, but it won’t give him a moment’s peace. He’s sunk to his thighs and he struggles, reaching for any kind of leverage, but he’s stuck solid, feet tethered to the floor. _

_ He hears a laugh. A dark cackle, low and deep and predatory-like. Slow, drawn out in series of threes. He’s never heard it, but it’s so  _ **_familiar_ ** _ , like he’s heard it once, no, tens of times before. A new dread seeps into his expiring body, like the voice beckons him to a fate darker than death. _

_ Somehow he’s still screaming. It’s voiceless. The cry wells from his chest, but it’s stuck there, rattling his bones like a bird in a cage. _

_ He stops sinking. _

_ The surroundings brighten and the red sky quickens, reflecting in the pool. He’s compelled to look up. _

_ The moon shines crimson. _

_ Time bends around it, clouds wisping unnaturally in countless directions, flitting like flocks of birds in the sky. _

_ One by one, monsters appear. But they’re not monsters. They’re of blood, rising from the crimson plane in a fountain of red. They’re not quite solid. Goopy liquid drips from their perverted snouts and fingertips. However, they’re just as imposing—if not tenfold terrifying—as their in-flesh counterparts. Blood congeals against blood to form solid ground where they step. _

_ A shadow emerges from the plane, bigger and darker and so saturated in red that it hurt his eyes to look at. It’s massive, nearly blocking out the moon with its huge beast-like shape.  _ **_Calamitous._ ** _ The entity’s eyes shine red, glaring down at him with such hatred—such  _ **_malice_ ** _ —that it turns his hot blood cold.   _

_ Again, he hears that  _ **_ugly_ ** _ cackle. _

_ Its colossal hooves rattle the earth with each step it takes, advancing at such a slow pace that it’s agonizing. It’s going to consume him whole; there’ll be nothing left of him. _

_ He’s lost the battle in every sense of the word. _

_ And with each step that roaring  _ **_laugh_ ** _ follows. A noise so loud, it drowns out the voice of the girl who’s been calling out to him this whole time. _

***

Link was still screaming when he awoke.

His voice was so hoarse he didn’t recognize it at first, the sound husky and airy as a broken flute would squawk when played. His throat, too, was raw and cracked to the point of pain. Dry as the desert.

As his cries faded, so did the otherworldly feeling of floating, and the mind trapped between the state of dream and reality pulled towards the latter. The darks of a dusty room replaced the unending red. The skin was encompassed by cotton sheets instead of viscous crimson, body pressing  _ (not sinking) _ into the cushy bed. Pale blue moonlight  _ (not red, not red) _ poured in through the window.

The girl’s faint cries continued to lose their echo until they were right next to him. 

She kept calling his name, knelt beside his bed as she wiped the sweat from his brow with one hand and held his arm--which had been thrashing about--with the other. Golden hair fell like seams of light from her shoulders. Blue eyes the color of a bright sky, worried and fearful, froze him to the core.

“Zelda.” He exhaled with a rattling breath. That was her name.  _ Zelda _ . He whispered it twice more, letting the comforting familiarity of it roll off his tongue. On the fourth whimper his voice hitched.

He jolted upright, burying his palms into his eyes and rubbing them as if to erase the nightmare from his mind. _ “Just a dream, just a dream,” _ he uttered, again and again, but shock kept his breathing hard and his body quivering.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Zelda, murmured. Her voice was softer now, more comforting despite the traces of a tremor in her overtones. “It’s over now.”

He felt her arms around him, a weight sinking into the bed as she sat beside him. Her skin was cool and refreshing against his flushed cheeks. She felt formless, soft, like a cushion or pillow. It was in that hold—face buried in her neck, smelling of lavender and  _ (not blood) _ apples—that his facade of a silent hero crumbled.

He wasn’t even aware he was sobbing.

Zelda just held him, running her hand through the knots in his hair. She kept quiet while he remained oblivious: to the way he was grinding his teeth to silence himself, to the incoherent nonsense he was spouting, or to how he was shaking so violently that he might fall apart.

By the time he was done, all energy spent, he slumped against her frame like it was  _ he _ who became an amorphous deadweight, while she hardened into a steadfast cornerstone. His eyes were puffy and sodden, breath shallow, nose congested, head pounding. He was so  _ tired. _

Sleep beckoned him, but it was a call he dared not answer.

“I’m sorry.” Link’s simple phrase was a broken whisper, voice cracking between syllables.

“That’s the third one this week,” she answered in tones just as small. Pain laced in between the sweet sounds of her voice.

“I’m sorry.” He echoed. 

The sigh was more felt than heard. “You needn’t be,” Zelda assured. “Are you alright?”

They both knew he wasn’t, but he nodded anyway.

Zelda shifted, adjusting a little so she was more comfortably seated on the bed. Link was pulled from her chest, his heavy head cupped in her cool hand while she dabbed his face down with a cloth. She wiped away the grief, tears, and sweat and snot, and discarded it to the floor.

“My poor knight,” she whispered, eyes glistening. “I wish there was something I could do to stop the nightmares.”

He sighed, resting his cheek against her hand. “This helps.”

Zelda showed him a smile, but her heart wasn’t in it.

After that, Link fell silent for a while. Zelda pulled him close again, head snug under her chin while she smoothed his hair. Over the next few hours she tried singing to him, rocking him, showering him with tender kisses on his forehead and cheeks…every possible comfort technique she probably could think of.

Link was still numb and unfeeling, but had managed to relax somewhat. The wheezy breaths deepened, the skin finally cooled to the touch, and the eyes were dry of tears.

They watched the orange seam of dawn peek through the night sky, pouring light in through the window.

“We won.” he muttered.

“Hm?” came from a very tired Zelda, who’d begun to nod off a few minutes earlier.

“We won, right?” Link’s voice was still hoarse, but he spoke loud enough for her to hear him. “This is real.” For the first time he moved his body of his own accord, lifting his hand to caress Zelda’s cheek.

The smile she gave him was soft, but so sad. “Yes.” She relaxed her cheek against Link’s hand and covered it with her own. “We defeated the Calamity Ganon and restored peace to Hyrule, together.”

Link nodded, and allowed his arm to drop down to his side.

“We won,” he repeated to himself. The words sounded forced.  _ “We won…” _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
